Question

Explain why plastic containers are favoured for storing food.

Answer 1

Hint: Think why always the shopkeepers give you plastic bags instead of much eco-friendly known bags like jute bags, paper bags, or cloth bags. Also can you carry liquids in these paper or cloth bags? No we can't, that's why we use plastic bags.

Complete Step by step solution:
Plastics are more conventional than other products known because they are lightweight, cheap, have good strength and elasticity and are easy to handle. For the above question we could have used metals also as containers but they are costly, and not light weighted and hence they are less user friendly and that’s the reason we see plastics everywhere around. Because of their good strength these are not easily decomposed and are also non-biodegradable in nature which is a very big issue of concern. The plastics are inert in nature because they usually contain saturated chains which are very difficult to break and hence when we pack any food item in them the food doesn’t react with the plastic and food could be stored without affecting its quality and since they are cheap also these are always preferred.

Note: Plastics are of very different types, we have plastics which mold at very low temperature and also there are plastic which requires high temperature for them to be deformed. Also, if we think of storing food in cheap metals then our food contains acids and bases which could possibly react with the metal containers and might spoil our food. Also in some cases plastics might also decompose due to temperatures which could make our food toxic and that’s why glass containers are the best to store food.